Hancock opens door to assisted suicide
Health Secretary asks how many have ended their lives early due to terminal, painful medical conditions
MATT HANCOCK has opened the door to legalising assisted suicide by asking for figures on how many people have killed themselves for medical reasons.
The Health Secretary wrote to Sir Ian Diamond, the national statistician, last week to ask for data on how many Britons who kill themselves have terminal medical conditions.
Mr Hancock told a private meeting of MPs and peers that he wanted the figures to inform a new debate on legalising doctor-assisted suicide in the UK.
Currently doctors who help someone to die in the UK can be jailed for up to 14 years. The force said there was no investigation under way at the moment, but that officers were assessing the information.
This means that hundreds of Britons have had to pay to travel to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end their lives. In the 22 years to 2020, 475 have gone there to kill themselves.
Assisted suicide is legal under certain circumstances in more than half a dozen countries. Euthanasia for terminally-ill people will become legal in New Zealand this November after a referendum last year.
Mr Hancock told a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Choice at the End of Life that he had asked Sir Ian “to consider what should be published in terms of statistics that can inform the debate in this country”.
He hoped the data from the Office for National Statistics would “shed more light on the data of those travelling to Switzerland in order to die at a time of their choosing”.
Mr Hancock told the meeting that it was “important that public debate is informed by the best statistics”. Currently only “partial” information is published – based on inquest verdicts – about suicides of people “who have particular conditions”.
He said: “I have written to the ONS. It is rightly a task for the ONS. I think it is important that public debate is informed by the best statistics.”
Mr Hancock told the meeting that when he became an MP he was against assisted suicide as he had always been worried about pressure being brought to bear on people to kill themselves.
But he said he had been affected by speaking to Sir Paul Cosford, the medical director of Public Health England who suffered from cancer and died aged 57 this month. In the British Medical Journal last October Sir Paul called for a rethink on assisted dying, describing the current law as “inhumane”.
Mr Hancock said: “People’s views of this do change. The argument is that we must protect those who are vulnerable from being coerced or feeling that they ought to go down this route.
“That is an important and valid argument but it is one of many that we need to consider. A well-informed public debate is the thing to do now.”
MPs led by former Conservative Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell want the Government to allow a free vote on legalising assisted suicide in the UK as early as 2024.
He told the meeting that his group wanted to bring to Parliament a “tightly drawn” proposal to legalise assisted suicide for someone who wants “to be put to sleep” to avoid suffering.
Two doctors would have to agree that the person is within six months of the end of their lives, and a High Court judge would have to agree that it was their wish to die.
Mr Mitchell asks: “Surely we must consider the fate of those who would rather, instead of living out their final days in agony or in anguish, wish to end their own lives on their own terms, surrounded by friends and family?”